Back to work today. Between vacation and being sick, I've been off for three whole weeks. Today was tough to get through, although it was made better by the fact that I had NO phonemail messages waiting for me...they did some upgrades at work after Christmas and everyone's voicemail was wiped out. Speaking of wiping out...we were up in Michigan to help move Beth's mom out of her apartment (she's going to an assisted living place but is visiting Judy in Alabama currently) and drove through a really bad snowstorm on the way back. So bad that the roads were insanely slippery. Enough so that going less than 25 mph we still wound up in a ditch. Fishtailed the minivan 2 or 3 times and slid right across the road, hit a ditch, and plowed right up the other side. Took a branch off some guy's pine tree, broke a parking light and knocked a piece of plastic off from somewhere under the grill. Tore up his lawn pretty badly, probably, but I couldn't really tell because of the snow. Alex didn't even wake up until I opened a door and he got cold. The people who owned the pine tree happened to be outside and saw the whole thing and helped us push the van back onto the road. A little bit down the road we stopped at the dirtiest, filthiest, scariest little backwoods hole in the wall gas station to check the tires and use the restrooms...and decided that if we were going to wait out the storm, we sure weren't going to do it there. We got the rest of the way home without further incident.